


Like You'd Been Softened

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, Nightmares, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-09
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-09-29 20:07:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,985
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10142987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Izaya reaches out desperately for something to cling to, something to brace himself against; and Shizuo’s hand meets his, the grip of the other’s fingers unhesitating and solid as the wall they have always seemed to be." Izaya wakes to pain and Shizuo soothes him back to comfort.





	

Izaya wakes to pain.

It’s overwhelming, for the first moment. His jolt to consciousness is sudden, so startling he can’t make sense of what’s even happening for the first breath; and the pain is there waiting for him, surging through every fiber of his body before he can attribute any kind of source to it. He’s screaming before he thinks, before he can even make an attempt to restrain the sound spilling past his lips; his whole body is in agony, muscles seizing tight like he’s being tortured, like he’s trapped in a cage of his own physical form. There are blankets tangled around him, the fabric twisting under his hips and binding him to stillness for the first panicked moment; and then he gasps an inhale, reflex overriding the unbearable wall of pain for the time it takes to fill his lungs, and into the haze of red-washed agony there’s a startled inhale from behind him, and a voice: “ _Izaya_ ,” no less concerned for the drag of sleep still weighting at the syllables. “Izaya, what’s wrong?”

“It hurts,” Izaya gasps. He can’t think straight, can’t form his awareness to any details beyond that overwhelming force: the pain, the rush of it blinding, the knot of agony twisting tighter in his body with every beat of his heart as if to scrape his nerves to endless torment. He wrenches a hand free of the twist of blankets around him, reaches out desperately for something to cling to, something to brace himself against; and Shizuo’s hand meets his, the grip of the other’s fingers unhesitating and solid as the wall they have always seemed to be. “ _Shizuo_.”

“What hurts?” Shizuo asks. He’s pulling at the blankets without waiting for an answer, overcoming the tension of them tangled around Izaya’s body by force that Izaya couldn’t muster. “Where?”

 _Everywhere_ , Izaya wants to say. His head is spinning, his shoulders are aching; there’s a weight at the small of his back, like the pressure of existence itself is trying to crush him down to the bed and suffocate him against the burden of the sheets. But he can feel muscles spasming, can feel the sharp waves of pain emanating from a fixed point, and “My legs,” he chokes out, gripping hard enough at Shizuo’s hand that he thinks someone else’s fingers would have given way, thinks he would have shattered the joints of someone with less superhuman resilience. “They’re--” and there’s another surge of agony, and his half-formed explanation dies to a scream of pain that Izaya only barely manages to brace to a hiss behind the grit of his set teeth.

The sheets pull away, leaving Izaya’s skin bare for the cool of the night air; he would shiver with it, if he could spare any attention for anything beyond the agony wracking his body and gritting so hard at his teeth, but it’s only for a moment anyway before Shizuo’s hand is pressing against the back of his thigh and sliding down over the trembling pain in his calf.

“You’re cramping,” Shizuo says, and he’s drawing his hand free of Izaya’s bone-shattering hold, pushing to sit up against the mattress as he slides down towards the foot of the bed. “Here” and his fingers are catching against the arch of Izaya’s shaking foot, his hold is urging the other’s ankle to tip up and back, and Izaya is gasping protest and curling in in a desperate attempt to draw his knee up and away from Shizuo’s hold.

“ _No_ ,” he hisses, “No, no, no, I can’t, I _can’t_ , that’ll make it worse.” The resistance is instinctive, the plea of a child panicked beyond rationality; but Izaya can’t bring himself back to composure, not with his whole body thrumming in the throes of pain from his cramping muscles.

“It won’t,” Shizuo says, and his voice is steady and his hold is more so, his fingers are bracing at Izaya’s ankle and his hold is urging the other’s foot back and Izaya can’t get free, he can’t wrench himself loose of the unbreakable strength of Shizuo’s hold. “You have to flex your muscles to get the cramping to stop.”

“I _can’t_ ,” Izaya sobs, and “ _Shizuo_ ” in a last surge of raw panic as his foot tips back, as the agony in his leg spikes higher, burning through the whole of his body to eclipse his awareness, to -- to ease, to give way to a trembling ache that leaves him shuddering helplessly against the bed but frees him of the worst of the pain, at least enough for him to think rationally again.

“Keep your foot like that,” Shizuo instructs, and he’s reaching for Izaya’s other leg, his fingers closing into the same unshakeable hold he gave to the first. Izaya gasps a breath as Shizuo’s hands urge his foot back, as the crescendo of pain through him capitulates into the shivering aftereffects of agony; and then Shizuo lowers his leg back to the bed, and takes a breath, and there’s silence in the room but for the raw drag of Izaya’s breathing against the quiet.

“Are you okay?” Shizuo asks, without pulling his hands away from Izaya’s foot.

Izaya takes a deep breath, lets it out in a shaky spill. His face is wet, he realizes. He hadn’t even noticed he was crying. “Yeah.”

Shizuo shudders over an exhale of his own. His hands ease against Izaya’s leg. “You scared me.”

Izaya huffs a humorless laugh. “I bet.” He lifts his hand to his face and angles his arm across his eyes. “Sorry.”

“You don’t need to apologize.” Shizuo lets his hold on Izaya’s leg ease so he can shift his attention to the first; his palm braces at the arch of the other’s foot, his fingers tipping back to urge Izaya’s leg into a gentle stretch that still blows all the air from Izaya’s lungs with the strain he can feel all up his spine. “I think you had a worse time than I did.”

“Yeah, well.” It’s hard to offer clear speech when Izaya’s breathing keeps catching on the strain of Shizuo working his tight-cramped legs into a stretch he suspects to be gentle and feels as unbearably intense. “It’s not a pleasant way to wake up.”

“For either of us,” Shizuo says, but the words are soft on his tongue, more sympathetic than frustrated in spite of the interruption to his sleep.

They both fall silent for a moment. Izaya is still trying to catch his breath, trying to ease his heartrate back from the rush of panicked adrenaline that first hit him while his consciousness struggles to come to terms with the immediate reality of the moment. It’s always a little disorienting to wake up to Shizuo next to him, always takes a little bit of time before Izaya can dare to let himself believe that this is his reality, now, before he can let too many years of wanting ease into the comfort of _having_ at last, and it’s only compounded by the jolting shove into awareness he just suffering. Everything seems blurry, hazy at the edges even when he lowers his arm from his eyes to lie across his stomach instead; the sense of pain just at his mental awareness lingers too, unformed anxiety clinging to the back of his thoughts even as Shizuo pushes his legs through careful, deliberate stretches to ease the strain of cramped muscles.

“I thought you were having another nightmare,” Shizuo says finally, murmuring the words so softly Izaya can barely hear them. There’s a shiver that runs down Izaya’s spine, a flicker of ice in his veins with horror enough to settle into his veins even with the distance of weeks from his last clear memory of one of the bad dreams Shizuo mentions; he shoves the thought away as fast as it tries to form, opening his eyes wide to the hazy grey of the bedroom instead of the horrors of his own imagination, but his heart still picks up another flutter of speed in his chest, his skin still goes clammy with uncomfortable sweat.

“No,” he says, and his voice is weaker than he wants it to be, it shudders in the back of his throat with too much of the fear that comes with those night-black dreams, the memories of blood and pain and absence like a void, a hollowed-out core to leave just a husk of Izaya’s identity for him to continue on with. He shuts his eyes, tries to focus on the feel of Shizuo’s grip at his foot, the weight of the other’s touch pressing close against his skin, too immediate and too strong to be anything but real. “Not this time.”

There’s a shift against the bed, Shizuo rocking forward over his knees; and then a touch, a hand skimming Izaya’s hip and up under the loose of his thin shirt to settle itself into the cradle of his waist as fingers fit underneath the shift of his bottommost ribs. Izaya huffs an exhale, all his air rushing out of him at once, and Shizuo’s fingers tighten against him, Shizuo’s thumb slides over his skin in the tiniest drag of a caress. It’s a breath of a motion, barely enough to feel; but it undoes some knot inside Izaya’s ribcage, eases the strain of panic closing itself around his lungs with as much simplicity as if Shizuo had given words to the _I’m here_ carried on the touch. They stay like that for a moment, Izaya breathing with the full range of his lungs as if he’s just come up from deep water while Shizuo’s palm rests against his skin like a wall to push back the demons of the dark; and then “Turn over,” Shizuo says, his voice as gentle as his touch. “I’m going to work the knots out of your legs.”

“You don’t have to,” Izaya tells him. “It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know,” Shizuo says. “Turn over.”

Izaya turns over. Shizuo doesn’t pull his hand away as the other shifts to roll across the bed towards him; his fingertips drag against Izaya’s skin instead, marking out a path of warmth against the other’s stomach and up across the curve of his spine. Izaya ducks his head against the sheets beneath him, shifting to work his arm out from under him so he can bring it up to make a pillow of his forearm, and behind him Shizuo is moving, sliding down towards the end of the bed so he can kneel alongside Izaya’s ankles. His touch lifts, drawing away from Izaya’s skin for a moment; but it comes back before Izaya’s anxiety can spike, his palm pressing down to weight against the knotted strain of muscle against Izaya’s thigh. The force is enough to push a gasp from Izaya’s lungs, enough to flex his feet in an arch of almost-pain; but Shizuo doesn’t pull away, just says “Tell me if it’s too much,” and maintains the pressure, drawing his hand down and against the tension aching with the dull pain of a fading cramp against Izaya’s thighs.

It _is_ almost too much. Shizuo has strong hands, and any pressure beyond a glancing weight would be near to agony, Izaya thinks, with how much tension his muscles have knotted themselves into. But the ache is familiar, the heat of Shizuo’s touch radiates out into Izaya’s body with the promise of comfort, of relief from the tension so tangled into his limbs, and the only voice Izaya gives to his reaction is a groan in the very back of his throat, a helpless exhale of relief as Shizuo’s hands work down his thigh and start in on the knots along his calf. Shizuo is thorough, unhurried, pressing Izaya right to the edge of pain with each pass without quite tipping over the edge, and against the sheets Izaya shuts his eyes, and breathes into a steady-slow rhythm, and lets his whole body go slack and unresisting to the force of Shizuo’s touch against him.

“We shouldn’t have walked to Shinra’s for dinner,” Shizuo volunteers, the words more an observation than chastisement. “You were shaking by the time we got back.”

“It would have been silly to take a taxi,” Izaya mumbles against the pillows. “I was fine.”

“You woke up screaming,” Shizuo tells him. “That’s not _fine_.”

“Yeah,” Izaya says, agreeing at least to the fact of Shizuo’s observation if perhaps not to the conclusion. He turns his head against his arm to settle himself into more comfort and lets his breathing rush out of him in time with the slide of Shizuo’s hands against him. “Just keep going, Shizu-chan.”

Shizuo snorts quiet amusement. “As you command” and then he falls as silent as Izaya, leaving them both to those thoughts that come with the late, dreamy hours of the night.

It’s easy for Izaya to relax. There’s a comfort to the intensity, in a strange way; Shizuo’s hands are steady against him, bracing against the ache in Izaya’s legs like they’re the most real thing in the room, and the sensation is enough to blank all Izaya’s mind in the moments that Shizuo is pressing against him. It’s like everything he is is dissolving into that single simplicity, into the ache of muscles cramped so tight as to damage themselves and the outside force of Shizuo, his palms working down against the strain of them to urge them back to comfort while Izaya breathes as deeply and slowly as he can. He loses track of time, like this; there’s just the span of each breath filling his lungs, bracing for a moment, and rushing back out, each almost identical to the last but for the slow release of tension in his legs under Shizuo’s ministrations. The pain fades away, the strain untangles itself from his body; and against the bed Shizuo shifts, leaning down until he’s close enough for his breath to spill warm against Izaya’s skin. Izaya huffs an exhale, his breath fluttering in his chest, and Shizuo’s lips brush at the back of Izaya’s knee, the weight of his mouth settling damp heat against Izaya’s skin. Izaya shudders against the bed, his whole body going slack against the tangled sheets below him, and Shizuo’s mouth presses up the back of his thigh, marking out a path of affection against Izaya’s skin up the length of one leg and down the other.

Izaya’s attention drifts into warmth, his awareness drawing close to trail the texture of Shizuo’s lips against his skin. His mind is wandering, his thoughts sliding in and out of his awareness like waves breaking against the sand of a beach, and then: “Izaya?” Shizuo says, and Izaya realizes the other’s lips have eased their pressure, that Shizuo is just trailing his fingertips up against the backs of Izaya’s knees now as if tracing the outline of his mouth against the other’s body. “Are you asleep?”

“No,” Izaya says, feeling the word become more true as he gives it voice, as he opens his eyes and tips his head to look back over his shoulder.

In the dim lighting of the room Shizuo’s yellow hair looks almost white, a pale halo around the dark of his eyes and the set of his mouth. He’s watching Izaya’s face; Izaya can see the focus of his expression even with the minimal detail he can pick out from the grey of the illumination around them. His fingers slide up against the backs of Izaya’s thighs. “Do you want to go back to sleep?”

It could be a rhetorical question. With Izaya’s throat still aching from his abrupt waking and the haze of the late hour making everything dreamy and unreal, it’s not. Izaya shakes his head.

Shizuo doesn’t look surprised. “Okay,” he says. His hands slide up from Izaya’s legs, his fingers draw up to brace at the other’s hips instead; when he moves it’s to slide forward by inches, to lean in over Izaya underneath him as he braces himself against that point of contact. Izaya tips sideways as Shizuo lies down across the bed next to him, rolling back onto his side while Shizuo’s hands draw across his hip to maintain the comfort of idle contact even as they move, and when he lifts his hand Shizuo is raising his elbow as quickly as Izaya reaches, making space for the other’s hold around his waist as they lean back in towards each other. Izaya’s head fits at Shizuo’s shoulder, Shizuo’s hand slides in against Izaya’s spine, and when Izaya tightens his arm Shizuo is stable under his hold, steady enough for Izaya to use him as a fixed point to draw himself in across the bed by inches without having to struggle for the motion. Shizuo’s other arm fits under Izaya’s head, Shizuo lifts his knee to catch and press Izaya’s legs down against the bed, and when Shizuo sighs a breath of comfort Izaya shuts his eyes against the soft of Shizuo’s t-shirt, letting the rush of the other’s breathing against his hair smooth the last tension of his abrupt waking from his shoulders.

“It’s okay,” Shizuo murmurs, his voice so soft it’s more a sensation against Izaya’s skin than audible sound. His leg shifts closer, his body pressing flush against Izaya’s as he hooks his foot over the other’s ankles to brace Izaya still. “I’ve got you.” Izaya tightens his hold on Shizuo’s waist, pressing his fingers closer in acknowledgment that serves far better than speech would; and against his hair there’s the weight of Shizuo’s touch, the idle contact of wandering fingers to stroke gentle affection against the back of Izaya’s head.

Izaya keeps his eyes shut, and keeps his breathing steady, and lets himself relax. With Shizuo holding him to the present, he doesn’t need to fear the dark.


End file.
